Simon Butler who has been ordered to serve 200 days in a French prison or pay
30,000 euros for giving skiing lessons without the right licence, says the
fight goes on for the British in the Alps

The “Megève Seven” may be yet to appear in the lexicon of British political freedom fighters, but tell that to Simon Butler. The 51-year-old, who is one of Britain’s top skiers, has been taking on the French for more than a decade now over what some perceive as Gallic protectionism at its most stubborn.

The so-called “Piste Wars” are a bitter dispute centring on British instructors wanting to teach in the French Alps and being thwarted by the authorities at every perfectly executed parallel turn. This season, after years of mounting unrest, tensions on the slopes finally froze over. Butler, who has taught in the resort for nearly 30 years, was hauled by gendarmes off a ski lift to spend a night in the cells, and six of his British colleagues who work with him in Megève were also arrested.

Now a judge has ruled he should either serve 200 days in a French prison or pay a 30,000 euro fine for teaching illegally. The rest were handed suspended fines of between 1,000 euros to 4,000 euros. His legal team have already appealed the latest ruling. According to Butler, it is a last desperate act by the French. The piste wars, he says, have come to a head.

“At the end of the trial I asked the judge if it was possible I could continue working,” says Butler who has returned to his home in Guildford, Surrey, to continue his fight. “He looked at me with a little shrug and a smirk and told me I could go to Switzerland. How does that sound to you? It’s disgraceful.”

Butler is now a serial offender in the eyes of the French. In 2004, he was fined €10,000 and told he could no longer practice in France. In 2013, he received another sentence against which another appeal is ongoing. As for this week’s judgement, he insists if it comes down to it he will go to jail. “I haven’t been able to work so how can they expect me to be able to pay?”

International tensions on the slopes are largely a result of EU laws that allow citizens to seek work in neighbouring countries. The sheer number of English arriving to do a season in the Alps has created a new bête noire in the region, prompting the Libération headline: “Europe: After the Polish plumber, the English ski instructor”.

In 2004 the French introduced a controversial rule that all non-French teachers had to pass the 'Eurotest', a timed high-speed slalom run devised by the Ecole du Ski Français which claims it ensures the highest quality instructors work in the Alps. It is fiendishly difficult, in particular for older ski instructors, and there are plenty of critics who say it is merely the authorities conspiring to give the French moniteurs a near stranglehold on the market.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, wrote in the Telegraph in February that “the great ski-school scandal is a complete, naked, shameless and unrepentant breach – by the French – of the principles of the European Single Market”.

Butler insists his qualifications, which he first achieved in 1985 and updated in 2008 are the equivalent of the test. And in any event, he says the EuroTest contradicts both EU laws and the law of the land. For him the root of the problem is simple, an anti-English vendetta.

“They basically want me out of that resort,” says Butler, who says he has been spat on and told to go back to England during his time working in Megève. “I am the last bastion of British instructors left working in France without having to do their ridiculous EuroTest.”

The British snowsports market comprises more than one million active skiers, around half of whom ski in the Alps and other British businesses have also spoken of struggling against French officialdom as it tries to devise ways to thwart the spread of the so-called “les bouffeurs de neige”, loosely translated as “snow gobblers.

British tour operators have been banned from taking guided groups out on the mountains. Last year, a small British operator in Les Trois Vallées, Le Ski, was taken to court by the authorities over the issue – and lost. In Megève, meanwhile, branded minibuses belonging to English companies have been stopped and fined on the way to the airport.

As the most determined opponent of such regulations, Simon Butler has found himself at the sharp end of any harassment. “I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been arrested – eight or nine times. This year when we were arrested I was taken to the cells in the basement of the police station.

“It was minus 10 outside so you can imagine how cold it was underground with no heating. They had taken my shoes off me in case I tried to strangle myself with the laces or something ridiculous like that. I just huddled in the corner in my ski gear wrapped in two filthy blankets – it was disgusting.”

Since the arrest he has been banned from teaching, and has been forced to close one of the two hotels his company operates in Megève to cover costs. But despite such rough treatment, and the concerns of his partner and two children aged five and eight, he continues undaunted. “I have lost hundreds of thousands, far too much money to stop this now. We are at a stage where this is coming to a head. The French know it as well. 100 per cent we will eventually go and win in Brussels. What is so special about France?”

Such fighting talk is no doubt what riles up the Megève authorities quite so, but Butler continues unabashed. Those pristine alpine pistes, he says, are there for all.